Heaven on 7 – taste of New Orleans in Chicago

On our recent trip to Chicago, we had lunch with our daughter at Heaven on 7 which boasts “Best Louisiana Cookin’ Outside of New Orleans.” That’s a pretty big boast, but it is a pretty good restaurant. We ate at the Rush Street restaurant on a Saturday afternoon while shopping.

It’s a fairly large restaurant. Their web site says they have seating for 170. The room where we were lead had a wall filled with different brands of beer. On the table was a selection of 15-18 different kinds of hot sauce. Right next to us was a keyboard player singing solo blues music.

I had a cheese omelet. It was very served with what they call breakfast potatoes. They were diced potatoes sautéed in oil with onions and peppers. The omelet was good, but not as good as the omelets served at Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown (where my son works). In fact, there wasn’t anything really Louisiana about my meal but I had fun trying a couple of the different hot sauces on my egg and on the potatoes.

My wife had poached eggs on New Orleans crab cakes with Creole sauce. It was really tasty. The sauce had a lot of flavor without overwhelming heat. My daughter had jambalaya which also was very tasty and very authentic of New Orleans cooking.

The blues player was Pat Hall. We really enjoyed his music. At the restaurant, he was playing solo. But he also has a band that he plays with called Pat Hall and the Fat Guys Band. I always believe in tipping the musicians, but in this case, instead of a tip, I bought his CD instead. It really is enjoyable.